


Nostalgia's Teeth

by orphan_account



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Loneliness, M/M, Not Beta Read, One Shot, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:15:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27390316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Erwin remembers and suffers for it.
Relationships: Levi/Erwin Smith
Kudos: 17





	Nostalgia's Teeth

**Author's Note:**

> I feel a little rusty when it comes to fanfic writing but I love reincarnation AUs but also i'm a lonely bitch, so have this. Also I just finished rereading Maurice so there are some references to that in this.

Erwin Smith does not simply wake up one morning and remember everything in a flash. Nor does it come to him slowly, through hazy dreams and whispers of the wind. It is not Maurice's hard-fought struggle out of sleep. Nothing as grand as all of that. He's washing his hands in a boutique coffee shop's bathroom, barely the size of a closet, frowning to himself. He had to push himself flush against the door to get in, a task that would have been difficult enough for anyone let alone a man of his stature. He managed it of course, but the real problem will be getting out. He lets go of a sigh and scrubs his hands under the hot water for a final time before turning the tap, and thinks _'If I told Levi he'd probably laugh his ass off'._

He pauses, blinks once, then twice. What a strange reaction, why would he ever be so confused by a thought about Levi of all people. Perhaps he's on the verge of another burnout, but forgetting Levi is simply unprecedented. He furrows his brows, inspecting the thought again. That, finally, is when it hits him. The issue isn't that he inexplicably forgot Levi, it's the remembering in the first place. He blinks again for good measure, this new revelation startling him even further. There's a knock on the door, however, driving him to scurry out from the bathroom as best he can, almost knocking over an old woman in his sudden rush to exit the whole building. The city streets provide no comfort, as he jostled by midmorning foot traffic. 

Hesitant to trust his mind, where a whole life's worth of thoughts have suddenly come to lay side by side with his own, he relies on his body. Muscle memory guides him through the streets and back to his apartment. It's only when he shuts the front door that he realizes he even made it home. He takes in the sight eagerly, dropping his leather shoulder bag across the loveseat which passes for a couch. He slides his hand over the coffee table, seeking out familiar wounds in the artificial wood. The TV sits silent, his roommate gone for the week. He reaches for the nearest book to him, some pretentious nonfiction about the American dream, and reads the first page to himself. He doesn't remember the words exactly, but they're close enough so he knows they haven't changed. 

He drops down onto the loveseat, body tense, and clutches the book tight in his hands. He's still Erwin Smith, a 36-year-old civil rights attorney. This is his apartment, with his kind and often absent roommate. He knows his own history better than he knows most things. He's had years to examine his childhood, his college years, and his disastrous 20s. He's dangerously acquainted with all of his own mistakes in that time. 

The reminder doesn't work as well as he had hoped. Sitting in his head right beside his life here in Boston is something new, though it doesn't seem it. It's a life that he knows he never remembered until today, but it feels as if it's always been his. There, he was Erwin Smith, Scout Commander, and in so many ways still is. Today is just an extension of that life as if he closed his eyes among the blood and the bile in their recapture of Shiganshina and woke up here. If he were an average man, maybe even a reasonable one, he would probably think he's going insane. He's not denying the possibility but he knows the feeling of a Sina jail cell just as well as he does the Brown University Library. These other memories are full of flaws, but they are the same blurred names as faces as those of his civilian life.

His life has been, in all forms, one of little trust but he knows his own mind. The whirling fear in his chest at not knowing is proof enough of that- he still knows to question. Irrational or not, these thoughts appeared in his mind and there has to be a reason for it. He sets the book back down on the table with a sigh, forcing his fingers to uncurl from the cover. He needs to keep a record, to write down everything in his mind as best he can. He fumbles for the notepad and pen in his satchel, flipping past legal notes with ease. He leaves the couch, kneeling in front of the coffee table and starts to write.

First, the life he lives in the moment. There's the chance this new set of memories will completely override his current history. He writes what he can remember of his father, his education, and then the dismantling of said education into something more aligned with the truth of the world. He can't help the satisfaction which settles in his chest as he realized he'd never changed, he still sought justice. His pen pauses for only a moment and has another revelation. These "new" memories are the older ones, his first life. He shakes his head, trying not to jump to conclusions, as he details his early career. 

He doesn't have the time to write down everything, as much as it pains him. He's a man of details, his memories flush with them, but he has to cut some corners. He doesn't smile but he feels the impulse that he should, he was the devil after all. He titles the second set of memories that, a history of the devil. He tries his hardest not to think of morality as he recounts his life. His hand starts to cramp, it had already been a long enough day without him losing his mind. He's certain that this his history, that the Commander of the Survey Corps is him down to the bones, and perhaps that's just proof he's losing it. 

He can't think of anything overly traumatizing that's happened lately to trigger this. Perhaps he's repressed it, though he's decently acquainted with such defenses in court. If something truly horrible had happened he would know it. His memory would be shaky, his emotions chaotic, and physical sickness would plague him. His hand has been steady all week, it's still steady now as his thumb cramps up. His pen never wavered then either, even when he was signing away the lives of his friends. He doesn't even allow the specifics here, on the people who allowed him a fraction of happiness. He needs to keep the record of that world in all ways.

He writes late into the night until he can barely keep his eyes open. He gives into his body eventually and retreats to bed, lacking the stamina he once had. His mind is still whirling with the pair of memories, let alone their implications, but he needs to sleep if he wants to think rationally in the morning. He drops onto his mattress still in his work clothes, sans only his shoes and tweed suit jacket. With his head on the pillow it's nearly impossible for him to stay awake but his last thoughts before the darkness claims him are of his friends. 

When he blinks his eyes awake to the honking of cars in the street. He furrows his brow and squints into his own room, where he never turned the light off. He reaches out, a habit worn into his skin, to shake Levi awake as well. His hand lands on the cold bed and something in his chest goes sharp. He's alone.

He pulls himself out of bed in his wrinkled shirt and pants, shivering in the morning air. Everything comes back into focus quickly. The memories are the same as they were yesterday, both clear and precise in his mind. It's wrong, he mutters as he flicks the lights off in his room and gathers his notes from the night before. He has a whole new history, a life of deep connections and close friends, and now feels even more alone. 

He has co-workers in this life, roommates, friends, and even past lovers. He shouldn't feel debilitatingly lonely. Still, the words of an old girlfriend come to mind, "the only time I felt truly close to you were when things were falling apart." She was right of course, he cannot do things by halves or really with anything less than all of his heart. A heart he dedicated to his cause and his comrades, who he'll probably never see again. 

_No_ , his throat goes tight as the idea takes hold, _who he'll never see again._ There are 7 Billion people in the world, and he ended up in Boston, Massachusetts. As far as he can remember he's never met anyone of them in this life, not even a cadet. Even if he's not insane and he's not the only one left, he has no way of knowing where they ended up. 

It hurts so exquisitely, worse than the lost of his own arm. He nearly falls to his knees right there as he did in Shiganshina, but he has no one to steady him this time. He swallows, blinks, and makes his way to the kitchen instead. There's cold coffee from the morning before for him to guzzle and leftovers to reheat. He still has files to review from work, so he can do what he always does, and dedicate himself to something so he doesn't have to examine the implications.


End file.
